The Return of the Discontinued Man (A Burton & Swinburne Adventure)

by Mark Hodder

  Babbage rasped, “Just the attitude that has weakened the Master Guild of Engineers to the point of extinction. Accuracy! Accuracy! I’ll have exactitude, if you please!”

  “Must I stand here listening to you two squabbling?” Burton asked. “What is your proposition, Charlie?”

  “That we give up the fight.”

  Before Burton could respond, Swinburne screeched, “That’s it? That’s your idea? Gladstone’s dictatorship continues unabated, he’s taken Isabella Mayson as his unwilling mistress, Prince Albert is incarcerated in the Tower of London and due to be executed next week, the Libertines are employing their mediumistic powers to incite a war with Prussia, most of our allies are dead, and your great plan is to give up? By my Aunt Carlotta’s cruelly constraining corsets! Why would you propose such a thing? It’s perfectly monstrous!”

  “I suggest it,” Babbage said, “so that we might start the rebellion from scratch.”

  Burton looked from Babbage to Swinburne to Brunel and back at Babbage. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  The scientist placed his right hand on the time suit’s headpiece. “This,” he said, “contains what amounts to a synthetic intelligence, though one virtually incapacitated by the ravings of a madman. Nevertheless, by putting carefully considered questions to it, I have managed to ascertain that the suit transcends the natural flow of time by employing an extraordinarily sophisticated mathematical equation. What fragments of it I’ve had access to leave me convinced that, were I to extract it in full, I’d be able to construct a machine to emulate the function of the garment.”

  Herbert Spencer said, “Yer mean t’ say, you could build another of the bloomin’ things?”

  “If that is what I meant to say, I’d have said it,” Babbage responded. “No. The techniques available in the year 2202 are beyond even my understanding. Without them, we cannot create microscopic systems. I might, however, be capable of constructing a macroscopic equivalent. It would perhaps, be the size of a room or, more significantly, of a large vehicle.” He looked meaningfully at Burton. “One that might carry the core of our rebel group three years back through history.”

  Swinburne squawked, swiped a fist through the air, and hollered, “By crikey! We’ll be able to go back and nip that blighter Gladstone in the bud!”

  Burton shook his head and muttered, “There’s a problem.”

  He knew the plan wouldn’t work. In travelling back to alter the past, the rebels would simply create a new strand of history. This one, in which he now found himself, would remain unchanged.

  Babbage misinterpreted the comment as a question. “There is. The helmet is almost drained of power. If you give me permission, I can transfer energy to it from the Nimtz generator. The process might possibly allow the intelligence to regain some measure of sanity, enabling it to repair itself and provide me with further information.”

  “Permission?”

  “The suit is yours.”

  Burton sighed. He indicated his consent.

  Babbage consulted his pocket watch and declared it to be nine o’clock on the fifteenth of February.

  The king’s agent suddenly knew exactly who, where, and when he was.

  The wrong Burton.

  In the wrong place.

  On the wrong day.

  Another repeat performance. Why?

  Babbage ran his finger around the side of the Nimtz generator. The disk crackled and threw out a fountain of sparks. The old man recoiled with a cry of alarm.

  Burton reached to either side, took Swinburne and Spencer by their arms, and started to pull them away from the bench.

  Babbage stepped backward. “I hadn’t anticipated—”

  A bubble formed around the helmet, suit and boots. With a thunderous bang, it popped, and the time suit, most of the workbench, and a large chunk of Isambard Kingdom Brunel vanished. The engineer slumped and became motionless.

  Spencer cried out, “Blimey! Where’s it gone?”

  “No! No! No!” Babbage wailed. “This is a disaster! We can’t have lost it! It’s impossible!” He stamped his feet and clapped his hands to his face. “How? How?”

  Burton closed his eyes and massaged the sides of his head. “I’ve had enough of mysteries, and the light in this place always gives me a headache. I’m leaving.”

  Swinburne and Spencer joined him. They walked back across the workshop and out through its doors. Snow was falling from a pitch-black sky. It was white. The courtyard, swathed in it, glared brilliantly under the spotlights.

  The men left the power station and approached the armadillidium. Burton ordered, “Open.” It unrolled its considerable bulk. He climbed aboard, and his companions followed him up.

  “The chaps are waiting for us at the Hog in the Pound,” Swinburne said. “Let’s see what plan Trounce and Slaughter have come up with. A means to rescue Miss Mayson from Gladstone’s lustful groping, I hope.”

  Taking hold of the reins, Burton guided the woodlouse back through the gardens and out onto Nine Elms Lane.

  He looked down at his hands. The scar on the left was no longer there. Brightness swept in from the corners of his eyes. He saw his fingers curled around the reins of his armadillidium; around the reins of a clockwork horse; around the handlebars of a velocipede.

  In an instant, the snow stopped falling and it was daylight.

  He lost control of his vehicle, hit the back of a hansom cab, careened into the kerb, and crashed to the ground. The penny-farthing’s crankshaft snapped and went spinning high into the branches of the trees lining the riverside.

  He lay sprawled on the ground.

  The cab driver yelled, “You blithering idiot!” but didn’t stop his vehicle.

  A raggedly dressed match seller—a woman who lacked teeth but possessed an overabundance of facial hair—shuffled over and squinted down at the king’s agent. “Is ye hurt, ducky?”

  For a moment, he couldn’t reply, then he managed to croak, “No. I’m all right.”

  “You look all battered. Better get yerself up off the pavemint afore the snow soaks into ’em smart togs o’ yourn. Stain ’em scarlit, so it will. Would ye like t’ buy a box o’ lucifers?”

  Burton pushed himself up. He thanked the woman for her concern and exchanged a few coins for a matchbook.

  After dragging his broken velocipede out of the road, picking up his hat, and brushing himself down, he stood for a minute, utterly perplexed. He touched his head and found that his hair was short. There were scars on his scalp, a painful lump at the back of his skull, and a scabby cut on his chin. His left elbow hurt. In fact, all of him hurt.

  Gradually, it dawned on him that he was on Cheyne Walk. He could see Battersea Power Station on the other side of the river. Fumbling for his chronometer, he flipped its lid. It was three o’clock in the afternoon.

  Of what day?

  He retrieved a cheroot from his pocket and smoked it while watching a creaking and clanking litter crab lumber past. The humped contraption was dragging itself along, its eight thick mechanical legs thumping against the impacted pink slush that covered the road, the twenty-four thin arms on its belly snatching this way and that, digging rubbish out of the mushy layer and throwing it through the machine’s maw into the furnace.

  Burton’s hands were shaking.

  He scraped at the ground with his heel and revealed a layer of bright red beneath. It appeared oddly fibrous, and he vaguely registered that the seeds had extended long hair-like roots.

  Home?

  The carriages and wagons that passed him were drawn either by real horses or by their steam-powered equivalents—small wheel-mounted engines that somewhat resembled the famous Stephenson’s Rocket. People crowded the thoroughfare just as they always did, a mélange of the well-to-do and poverty-stricken, of the mannered and the uncouth.

  A rotorchair chopped through the leaden sky. A hawker sang, “Hot chestnuts, hot chestnuts, penny a bag!” Three urchins raced past laughing and shouting and fl
inging snowballs at each other.

  The final vestigial glow of Saltzmann’s Tincture faded.

  He looked back the way he’d come. The distant, blackened and ragged stump of Parliament’s clock tower was visible over the rooftops.

  All was as it should be, but he could sense on the inside of his legs, just above the knees, where the woodlouse’s saddle had pressed against his legs, and when he closed his eyes he could hear the resentful tones of the mechanical horse.

  Those experiences had been real.

  He finished his cigar, flicked it away, and wheeled his clanking penny-farthing along the thoroughfare to Number 16. Just as he reached the house, its front door opened and Algernon Swinburne stepped out, dressed in a wide-brimmed floppy hat, overcoat, and an absurdly long striped scarf.

  “What ho! What ho! What ho!” the poet shrilled. “Fancy finding you on my doorstep. I thought you’d be out for the count. Did you come to talk me into taking an afternoon tipple? I mustn’t. I mustn’t. Oh all right. Consider me persuaded. Have you slept? I say! Look at the state of your boneshaker. Surely you didn’t ride it in this weather?”

  “The crankshaft broke,” Burton replied, “and, in truth, Algy, I have no notion of how or why I ended up here.”

  “Are you one over the eight already? Drinking to ease the pain, I suppose, though your wounds appear somewhat less gruesome by the light of day. Not your face. Just your wounds.”

  “I haven’t touched a drop, but a drink sounds like a very good idea.” Burton tested his left elbow, bending it cautiously. It hurt, but not as much as he expected. “Sister Raghavendra applied her miraculous salves?”

  Swinburne looked surprised. “She was stitching and smearing for some considerable time. Have you forgotten?”

  “After a fashion. Let’s cross to Battersea. I’d like to take a look at the station. I’ll explain on the way.”

  “We were there just yesterday. Explain what?”

  “Yesterday? Is it Thursday?”

  “The sixteenth, of course. Did that knock to your head scramble your wits?”

  “A very good question.”

  Burton searched his memories and found them to be a confusing tangle, some fading quickly, while others suddenly emerged like the sun breaking through clouds. Experiences overlaid one another in palimpsestic contradictions.

  He’d been at Battersea Power Station, where Raghavendra had treated his wounds. The recollection was clear. He could see her bending over him, her long black hair hanging down, her skin dark, and her eyes big, brown and beautiful.

  “The ointment smells rather bad,” she’d said, “but it will accelerate the healing provided you can avoid being hit again, which, knowing you, is very doubtful. I’m tempted to thump you myself.”

  As vivid as that scene was in his mind’s eye, he knew that at exactly the moment it occurred he was also riding a clockwork horse from Buckingham Palace to the headquarters of the Department of Guided Science. Similarly, he’d watched Charles Babbage’s experiment go awry at nine o’clock last night while he was, at the same time, sitting at his desk this morning writing up a report of Spring Heeled Jack’s attack. He’d snatched three hours of sleep at exactly the moment he’d witnessed Babbage’s actions repeated.

  I left the station with Algy and Sadhvi. The cabriolet dropped him home first, then her, and took me to Montagu Place. I slept fitfully, woke early, wrote the report. I dozed. I ate lunch. I rode here.

  As they pushed the penny-farthing through the narrow alleyway beside Swinburne’s residence and into the back yard, he began to tell the poet about his lost, replaced, extended, repeated—he couldn’t settle on an accurate description—hours.

  He slid his cane from the velocipede’s holder, and they returned to the pavement and started eastward toward Chelsea Bridge. Burton limped, feeling again the damage done to him by his assailant in Leicester Square.

  “I can only conclude,” he said, “that I somehow slipped into alternate Burtons in alternate histories and was, for some reason, twice drawn to Babbage’s attempt to revive the damaged time suit.”

  “You went sideways, if I might put it like that? And a little back through time? How, Richard? Why?”

  “I’m at a loss. Right now, I can hardly think straight.”

  They walked on in silence for a few minutes, crossing the Thames, wrinkling their noses.

  “Are you sure you’re not becoming malarial again?” Swinburne asked.

  “No, Algy. It was all as real as—” Burton gestured at their bright-pink surroundings. “As this.”

  The perturbing thought occurred to him that this outlandish vista, too, was not the one to which Sir Richard Francis Burton properly belonged.

  They reached the south bank of the river and continued on until they were at the edge of the land bordering the power station.

  “I require but a moment,” Burton said, drawing to a halt.

  He spent two minutes gazing at the edifice; at its four copper towers, which vanished into the low cloud; at its many high-set windows; and its entrance gates and red brick walls. He could see in the snow the marks made by his, Swinburne’s and Raghavendra’s feet as they’d arrived and departed last night. Physical evidence of a certain truth.

  “All as it should be,” he murmured. “Let’s find a watering hole.”

  He set off, with Swinburne scampering beside him. They strolled past Battersea Fields until they came to Dock Leaf Lane. The poet pointed his cane at a small half-timbered public house. “How about there?”

  “The Tremors,” Burton said. “Very apt.”

  “Indeed so,” Swinburne enthused. “It’s the place El Yezdi investigated in his own history when he was hunting for Spring Heeled Jack.”

  They crossed the road and entered the premises. Just as El Yezdi had described in his reports, it had smoke-blackened oak roof beams pitted with the fissures and cracks of age, tilting floors, and crazily slanted walls. There were two rooms, both warmed by log fires. Passing through to the smaller of them, they settled on stools at the bar.

  An ancient, bald and stooped man with a grey-bearded gnome-like face rounded a corner, wiping his hands on a cloth. A high collar encased his neck, and he wore an unfashionably long jacket.

  “Evening gents,” he said in a creaky but jovial voice. His eyes widened when he saw Burton’s battered face. “Ow! Looks like you were on the wrong end of a bunch o’ fives!”

  “London,” the king’s agent said ruefully. “It’s the most civilised city in the world.”

  “Aye. It’s given me my fair share of punch-ups, that’s for sure. Deerstalker, sirs? Finest beer south of the river. Or would you prefer Alton Ale? I’ve a few bottles left. It’ll be hard to come by until they rebuild the warehouse. You know it burned down?”

  “Yes, we’re aware of that,” Burton said. “I’ve developed an aversion to Alton. A pint of Deerstalker will do just fine, thank you.”

  “For me, too,” Swinburne added. “What a splendid old pub. Are you Joseph Robinson, sir?”

  The publican took an empty tankard from a shelf, held it to a barrel, and twisted the tap. As the beer flowed, he said, “Aye, for me sins, though folks always calls me Bob. Dunno why.” He placed a beer in front of the poet then took down a second glass and filled it for Burton. “You’ve heard of me, have you?”

  “Yes,” Swinburne answered. “From the Hog in the Pound.”

  Robinson looked surprised. “That old place! But I owned it well afore your time, youngster.”

  “My father had occasion to take a beverage there,” Swinburne lied.

  “Oh, I see. Lots did. It was popular in its day.”

  Burton searched himself for any sense of déjà vu. He found none, felt relieved, then was suddenly disoriented by the arrival of an elderly man who stood beside Swinburne and greeted the landlord. “All right, Bob?”

  “Hallo, Ted,” Robinson replied. “I’ll be right with you just as soon as I’ve finished servin’ these fine gents.”
r />   “I kin wait, so long as it ain’t ’til the beer’s run out.”

  The newcomer possessed weather-beaten skin and a bald pate, a huge beak-like nose and a long pointed chin. He resembled Punchinello, and when he spoke sounded like him, too—his tone sharp and snappy.

  The king’s agent paled. The coincidence was profound. The man was Ted Toppletree, who was described in El Yezdi’s The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, and at his feet, eagerly sniffing at Swinburne’s ankles, was the very same basset hound Burton had seen in his “other” study.

  Toppletree noticed that his pet had attracted attention.

  History began to repeat itself.

  “Arternoon, sir,” Punchinello said to Burton. “Ain’t seen you around this way before. I reckon I’d remember a mug—er, I mean a face—like yours, if you don’t mind me a-sayin’ so. You looks like a regular fighter. A pugilist. No offence meant. The name is Toppletree, Ted Toppletree, an’ the dog here is Fidget. He’s the best tracker you’ll ever find; can sniff out anything. He’s fer sale if’n you’re interested.” He addressed Swinburne, “Blimey! He’s taken a right shine to you, ain’t he!”

  The poet, whose trouser leg was now being pulled at by the hound, emitted an agonised groan. He’d also recognised the developing scene. Glaring at Burton, he hissed, “Don’t you dare!”

  Burton ignored him, cleared his throat, and stuttered, “May—may I offer you a drink, Mr.—Mr.—Mr. Toppletree?”

  “Very good of you, sir. Very good indeed. Most generous. Deerstalker. Best ale south of the river.”

  Robinson, responding to a nod from Burton, poured the third pint.

  Swinburne jerked his ankle away from Fidget only to have the dog lunge forward and bite his shoe.

  “Ouch! I say!” he objected. “Confound it! Why won’t he leave me alone?”

  “Here, Fidget! Sit still!” Toppletree pulled the hound away. The animal settled, gazing longingly at the little poet’s ankles. “You sure you wouldn’t like to snap ’im up, sir?”

  “I’ve never been surer of anything,” Swinburne responded. He took a long gulp of ale. “I do believe you may be right about this beer, though. Very tasty! Perhaps little Fidget will calm down if we offer him a bowl?”